A Work in Progress

SpecMusicMuse – Mass Effect 3 Reflections, Part 2: Why I Chose “Synthesis” and why no Option is “Right” or “Wrong”

I like to first start out by saying that, unlike the IDers, I do not assume that my favorite option is the “right” option and thus, by default, the other two must mean Shepard got Indoctrinated. For one, it’s circular thinking, and I hate thinking in circles. I’d much rather keep it a relatively straight line, thank you very much.

Of course this also means that I won’t have to post a half hour long or longer vid trying to explain how the “Renegade” option of “Destroy All Synthetics” is actually the “Paragon” option in disguise. Mostly because, in Part I of my Reflections on Mass Effect 3, I showed how it can’t be Paragon. The Paragon Shepard wasn’t even willing to sabotage the Genophage cure (and thus doom the Krogan to eventual extinction) even when doing so could’ve given him the upper hand against the Reapers, so thinking that Paragon Shep at the end would be okay with the idea of committing a triple+ genocide just to kill the Reapers is way too much a stretch of logic to be sound. But Badass Renegade Shep? He would. Without thinking twice. ‘Cause Badass Renegade Shep is all about revenge and “ruthless calculus,” even if he might feel bad about it later.

And if Badass Renegade Shepard was the type of character you were playing. If you had no trouble with backstabbing the Krogan, the Geth, or anyone else who got in your way, then Destroy is the “correct” option for your character–’cause that’s just how he rolls.

But my Shepard wasn’t a total Badass Renegade. Sure, she started out a little heavy on the Renegade end, but as I continued playing, my choices for her went more “middle of the road” by the end of Mass Effect 2, and by the end of Mass Effect 3 she was much more Paragon than Renegade. But despite the Control the Reapers option being the blue color, it didn’t exactly strike me as the Paragon thing to do – because Control destroys free will. And besides, the colors might reflect something more than just Paragon/Neutral/Renegade, as gamermd83 explains in her two-part “Beings of Light” theory:

Sure, the Reapers never had free will to begin with, but why continue the cycle?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. From this point on I’ll be getting a little esoteric on y’all’s asses, so be warned:

Anyone who can put 2+2 together and find out it equals 4 will have no doubt figured out why Commander Shepard’s last name is Shepard. In Mass Effect 2 he dies in a manner where there’s no mistake that he’s dead: by getting spaced out of an exploding Normandy SR1 in a damaged space suit to then get caught up by a nearby planet’s gravity well to end up a crispy critter upon re-entry as he plummets helplessly to the planet’s surface.

A later scene then shows Mr. Bac’n’Crisp getting rebuilt from scratch by Cerberus-modified Reaper tech courtesy of the LAZARUS Project ran by Miranda Lawson (an interesting set of names from an esoteric perspective, no?). It’s obvious that the story writers intended Shepard to be a Messianic archetype, hence why his name is Shepard (Duh!). In fact, after a Death and Resurrection, the only thing missing for him to completely fulfill his Messianic fate is an Ascension.

So why, if “Control” and “Synthesis” means he got Indoctrinated, is “Destroy” the only option that either ends in him clearly dying, or surviving if you got the “perfect” ending, but not ascending? In the other two, he clearly undergoes some sort of energy-based transformation: either as a new “Catalyst” that now gets to Control the Reapers (who now has to figure out what to do with the damn things, but hey, he’s got eternity to figure that out now) or by becoming the very energy that synthesizes Organics with Synthetics at the molecular level, thus literally reshaping all life in the galaxy into something completely new – and in manner that doesn’t turn them into mind-controlled Reaper toys (As shown by the EDI and Joker scene at the end of the Synthesis, uh, ending).

So by that perspective, “Control” and “Synthesis” aren’t necessarily “wrong” choices. But neither is “Destroy.” In fact, there is no wrong or right choice, because all three come with some sort of sacrifice, and only one effectively breaks the cycle, hence why “Synthesis” only ends up as an option if your War Assets are high enough to get the “good” endings for either of the three choices–in other words, “Synthesis” is the only choice that doesn’t come with a “bad” ending.

“But yeah, but isn’t Synthesis what the Reapers were wanting all along?” you ask.

Except…the Reapers aren’t Synthetics….

Not really. The Reapers don’t “want” anything. They have no free will, remember? They only perform the function their creator(s) had created them to perform–to prevent the inevitability of Synthetics turning on their creators and destroying all organic life. They don’t care how it gets done so long as it gets done. Remember, the Reapers only harvest the species that have developed the means to create synthetic life, thus why they left the humans and other species alone in the last cycle, because 50,000 years ago Humans, Salarians, Asari, etc. were still far too primitive to do so.

And no, Shepard did not prove that synthetics and organics can coexist separately forever by his forging a peace with the Geth and Quarians. Organics have this bad habit of creating machines smarter and more powerful than they are and then assuming they can wipe said machines out (which, of course, is why the Reapers were created millions of years ago to begin with, remember?). So that damn annoying ghost kid was right that eventually the cycle would continue with or without the Reapers, only that in the “Destroy” option there’d no longer be any Reapers to stop the process before Organics get wiped out by their own creations (and not because Synthetics are evil, but because Organics are stupid enough to attack them).

And that’s why “Destroy” works best for Renegade Shep. After all, Renegade Shep doesn’t give a shit about ascending or moral quandaries or any of that trivial crap. As far as he’s concerned, the Reapers need destroyed, period. And if doing so requires sacrificing half the galaxy to do so, than that’s just “ruthless calculus.” The ends justify the means. In that way, Renegade Shep is no different than the Catalyst/Reapers, because to the Catalyst the ends justifies the means as well.

“But wasn’t the whole point from the beginning of the story about Shepard needing to destroy the Reapers?”

Yeah, at first. But have you ever heard the term plot twist?

And as for “Control”: my personal beef is the word, itself. It reflects a continuation of the Reapers remaining without free will. Also, that’s a whole lotta’ power for one person to control. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. And not even Paragon Shep will long resist that, especially now that he has an eternity to become corrupted by all the Reaper power. In other words, Control makes you no different than the Catalyst.

But at the end of the day, all philosophizing aside, there was essentially only one reason I picked “Synthesis”:

I loved EDI, I loved the romance between her and Joker, and I knew there’d be no way they could ever have cute little silver babies together without Synthesis. I knew that Shep’s time was over, whether he ascended or died. And surviving the “Destroy” ending doesn’t matter because once Joker discovered that Shep was responsible for the murder of the love of his life when other options had been available, then Shep was a dead man walking anyhow (“Hey Shepard! Long time no see! What? You did what!? Die, asshole!” *flies rebuilt Normandy into a star*).

But Joker and EDI? Their time had just begun. And their love for each other was a far better sign of hope than any peace of convenience forged between the Geth and Quarians. They deserved their chance. For they proved that love can conquer a problem that even the big bad Reapers with all their power could never completely solve.

They deserved Synthesis.

And more importantly, the cycle deserved to be broken.

The Reapers always went on and on about how the cycle can never be broken. And yet, with Synthesis, it was.

About

Scott M. Sandridge’s first short story, “Treecutter,” was published in The Sword Review in July 2005. Since then, he’s gone on to publish more short stories, and write reviews for Tangent Online, Withersin, and The Fix. He has also been a columnist for the Double-Edged Publishing webzines, a Submissions Editor for Ray Gun Revival, and the Managing Editor of Fear and Trembling. He is currently an editor for Seventh Star Press and Loconeal Publishing.

His flash fiction story, “Sleep Paralysis”, was a Top Ten Finisher in the 2008 P&E Readers Poll for Best Short Story – Horror.

His short stories have appeared in various online magazines and print anthologies, including Silver Blade, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales: Dark Sorcery Special Edition, and anthologies from Pill Hill Press, Wicked East Press, and Seventh Star Press.

The Damn Dislcaimer

I do not get paid to give good reviews.
I do not get paid to give reviews, period.
There are no expectations from anyone with regards to how a review turns out. I write what I mean.
Go screw yourself, FTC.